Associate Professor Panayiotis Pappas from the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada, will present a lecture entitled “The Immigrec project: Building a virtual museum of the Greek-Canadian immigrant experience”, on Tuesday 16 April 2019, at the Ithacan Philanthropic Society, as a part of the Greek history and Culture Seminars offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne.

The project Immigrec (Immigration and Language in Canada: Greeks and Greek-Canadians, Anastassiadis et al. 2017), is an interdisciplinary project which aims to document the second wave of Greek immigration to Canada (roughly the period 1945 to 1975) through the collection of oral histories and archival material (travel documents, photographs, etc.) for the purpose of creating a virtual museum, and for research in history, political science, anthropology, and linguistics.

The project has interviewed 453 participants from 12 different communities in Canada, and more than 13 different geographic regions of Greece, yielding an unexpected treasure trove of historical, anthropological, and linguistic data.

Assoc Prof Pappas will present a general overview of the project, discussing the organization of our research efforts, our preliminary linguistic results, and showcasing some of the most exciting features of the virtual museum.

Dr Panagiotis Pappas currently is a member of the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. He completed his Bachelor of Arts at St John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, and later on pursued a PhD in linguistics at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. His PhD dissertation examined weak object pronoun placement in Later Medieval and Early Modern Greek. Dr Pappas' research interests are mainly in the areas of historical linguistics, language variation and change, but he is also interested in issues of language contact, Balkan linguistics and the teaching of Modern Greek. His visit to Melbourne is made possible by the Vassilogiannis Bequest, the generous gift to the Greek Studies Program by the late Mr Anastassios Vassilogiannis.

When: Tuesday 16 April 2019, 7.00pm
Where: Ithacan Philanthropic Society, Level 2, 329 Elizabeth St, Melbourne